The Man in the Moss (89 page)

           
'Mungo,' she said, her voice unexpectedly husky, 'I don't
know what I'm gonny do with you, and that's the truth.'

           
Macbeth smiled, a soft, stupid, wet-faced smile; she
could tell he hadn't even noticed her hair.

           
'The one big thing,' he said, almost in a whisper, and
made no sense.

           
It fact it was all crazy, Moira thought. Horrifically
crazy. He shouldn't be here. He didn't know what the hell he was into. He
didn't have a chance.

           
And did any of them?

CHAPTER
III

Eventually, Benjie had
persuaded his mam to let him take The Chief to his bedroom, where the German
Shepherd squeezed himself into the gap between the wardrobe and the wall, sat
there with his ears down and panted a lot.

           
'Come on, lad,' Benjie whispered, sitting up in bed in
old ninja turtle pyjamas. But The Chief wouldn't move. He kept himself in this
dark corner and there was pleading in his sad, brown eyes.

           
Above the noise of rain, Benjie could hear other village
dogs howling in the distance. When he lay down and shut his eyes he realised
that the way The Chief was panting meant he was
really
howling too, but The Chief was smart, the last thing he wanted
was to have himself taken out to the shed.

           
When Benjie opened his eyes again, he saw light-beams
flitting across the curtains, like car headlights.

           
Which would have been all right, only the back of the
house overlooked the Moss and there were no cars on the Moss, except months ago
when the lorries and JCBs had been out building up the road and they'd found
the bogman.

           
Benjie scrambled to the end of his bed, leaned over and
stuck his head through the gap in the curtains.

           
He gasped.

           
It were like Fireworks Night out there.

           
Lights all over the Moss, like smouldery bonfires. Lights
swooshing like rockets, through the rain, from one side to another, sometimes
going across each other.

           
But no noise except for the howling dogs and the rain.

           
The lights lasted no more than ten seconds and then it
was all gone and Benjie couldn't see anything apart from the water rolling down
the glass.

           
But when he lay in bed, the light showed up in the space
between his eyes and his closed eyelids. He saw the Moss lit up greenish now,
all green and glowing, except for the Dragon Tree.

           
And that was
twice
as big now, its branches, all gnarled and knotted and black among whirling,
spinning lights, two of them spiking up into the sky ... arms like giant horns
with groping claws on the end. And the whole thing was breathing, dragging up
big, soggy lungfuls of peat, and soon it was going to burst and its arms would
gather up the whole village.

           
Benjie felt a scream coming on and chewed the bedclothes
instead, not wanting to be put out in the shed with The Chief and get gobbled
up first.

Macbeth watched Chris and
Chantal sink side by side into the sofa at the Rectory. They didn't seem like
the same people. 'I really am tired,' Chris said. 'I'm shagged out.'

           
And then, clearly shocked at himself, he looked up at
Cathy. 'I'm sorry. I don't know what I'm saying. Catherine, has something got
inside me? Am I possessed?'

           
Cathy waved it away. 'Chris, you've got to tell me very
quickly, no evasion.
What happened in
there?'

           
Chris tugged at his beard. 'I just don't know. First of
all, it was fine, we felt... how we used to feel. Holy. Special. And then it
all went wrong ...
really
quickly. It
went... dirty.'

           
'It was like baptism,' Chantal said, hugging herself with
goosebumpy arms. 'Only in reverse. In our baptism ... our
re
-baptism, we throw off some of our outer clothes - symbolically -
and we're submerged in water. It could be a river, or we'll hire a public pool
for an afternoon, and you come up cleansed and purified.'

           
'That's
it
,'
Chris said, eyes full of agony. 'That's right. Only this was like being
submerged and some of us threw off our Christian clothes and we came up not so
much dirty ... well, yes, dirty - but worse, really. Like it was
before.'

           
'People smoking,' Chantal recalled. 'In church. But it
didn't
feel
like church, it didn't
feel like anywhere.'

           
'Yeah, and blaspheming in an everyday sort of throwaway
fashion. And we drank ... God forgive us, we drank the Communion wine, like it
was any old pop. It didn't matter. We were like the mass of godless people out
there, we didn't need religion any more, we had no use for it. Catherine, I'm
confused. We'll burn in hell for this, I think we've
started
to burn.'

           
'It's OK,' Cathy said soothingly. 'The fire's out, now.'
She turned to Moira and Macbeth. 'It's obvious, isn't it? It was the final
sterilization.'

           
'Well ...' Moira said. 'You can't just drain the power of
centuries out of stone, you can only take it out of people, you let them absorb
it through their mindless, passive ritual and then you snuff out the light,
blow their shaky faith up their faces and leave them empty and when they walk
out totally knackered like this guy here, they've drained out everything that
was left in the church.'

           
'Forgive me,' Macbeth said, 'Why'd they wanna do that?'
           
'Because the church is the
sacred centre of the village,' Cathy said. 'It's got to be neutralized before
you can ...' She stopped for breath and couldn't go on.

           
'Replace it with something black and horrible,' Moira
said.
           
'What ... what can
we
do to help?' Chris asked, rather
feebly..

           
Cathy rounded on him. 'You can keep your bums on that
settee, call in all your friends and
don't
move
until your coach comes for you. And then you can go away for
ever."
           
'Steady, Cathy.' Moira took her
arm.
           
'Wants to know if he's
possessed?' Cathy said with a sharp laugh. 'Well, of course he's possessed.
Possessed of a very slow brain. Moira, look, there's a copper out there who
wants to go up the Hall with Stan Burrows and a bunch of his mates and do some
sorting out, as they put it.'
           
'So stop him,' Moira said.
           
'
You
try and stop him!'

           
'Look, they go up there mob-handed, God knows what could
happen. It's pretty damned obvious - and we're looking at something planned
months ago - that Stanage has shut down the church to deflect a lot of energy
towards the second natural focus, the second-highest building in Bridelow. The
brewery, right? And what's at the very top of the brewery building?'

           
'Th'owd malt-store,' Willie Wagstaff said impatiently.
Disused. Moira, happen this is over me head, but why don't we go up there
mob-handed and flush the buggers out?'

           
'Because you can't fight this thing with primitive
violence. I swear to you, Willie, those guys go up there they'll wind up
killing each other. It's like, how come you can put a bunch of ardent,
Bible-punching born-again Christians in a
church
and they come drifting out an hour or so later with this amazing born-again
apathy
?'

           
'He's right, though, Moira,' Cathy said. 'We can't just
stand around doing nothing.
Somebody
ought
to go up there.'
           
It's what I've been trying to
tell
you!' Willie cried, all eight
fingers beating at his thighs. 'Somebody
has
.
Mr
Dawber's
up there. And Mr Dawber's
been in a mind to do summat daft.'
           
'OK,' Moira said. 'Come on,
Willie.'
           
'We'll go in my car,' Macbeth
offered, moving to the door.
           
'Ah ... not you, Mungo.'

           
'What
... !' Macbeth counted
three seconds of silence before he tore off his black slicker and slammed it to
the Rectory lino with a noise like a gunshot. Willie jumped back. On the sofa
Chris and Chantal gripped hands.

           
'Now listen up!' Macbeth snarled. 'Everybody just fucking
listen up!
I have
had
it. I have had it up to
here
with getting told to butt out. I am
sick to my gut
with being treated
like some goddamn halfwit with a stupid name who had the misfortune to be born
five generations too late to be part of any
viable
heritage
. Either I'm in, or I start
figuring a few things out for myself, and maybe I'll kick the wrong asses and
maybe I won't, but that's your problem not mine.'

           
It all went quiet. Shit, Macbeth thought. Which reject
script did that come out of? He picked up his slicker and put it on.

           
'OK,' said Moira carelessly. 'You drive, Mungo. Cathy, I
don't know what to say, except
please
keep that cop off our backs for as long as you can. And maybe if you can get
the Mothers together in one place, that might be best. Would everybody fit into
Ma Wagstaff's parlour?'

           
Some of what happened next Macbeth did not follow.
Several times he wished he'd never left Glasgow.

           
Once, he wished he'd never seen Moira Cairns.

Twice Ernie Dawber had said
his throat was very dry and would it be possible to get a drink of water?

           
He was sprawled in a corner between the hallstand and the
front door. There was broken glass all around him. He thought he'd sprained his
ankle when he fell.

           
'When you ter-tell me.' Shaw Horridge was still standing,
feet apart, amidst the wreckage of the mirrors. His mouth looked permanently
twisted because of a cut which

extended his lower lip.
There were stripes of blood down both cheeks. Freckles of glass still glittered
either side of his thin nose.

           
'What
can
I
tell you?' Ernie croaked. 'He planted his seed in Bridelow and that seed turned
out to be you. Was Ma going to have your mother turned away, same as they did
with your father, and leave Arthur Horridge humiliated three days from the altar?
'Course she wasn't, she'd been in the same situation.'
           
'I cer-cer ... I cer-cer-can't
accept it, Mr Der-Der ... Aaargh!' With both fists, Shaw began to beat his own
head.

           
Ernie felt his agony, the way he used to experience the
lad's frustration all those years ago, when Shaw was the best reader in the
class and couldn't prove it.

           
'They never told you, because not many outside the
Mothers' Union knew about it. Me, I put two and two together after a bit, but I
said nowt. It was none of my business. Ma kept an eye on you but she'd never go
too close. She never wanted you to be
tempted
or to get too close to the shadow side. For your own good. Please, lad ... a
cup of water?'
           
'If I ter-turn my ber-back on
you, you'll be ... out.'
           
'I don't think I can even
walk, lad.'
           
'How der-der-do I know that?
Ker-ker-keep talking.'
           
Ernie swallowed. 'I ...
remember once, Arthur came to see me. Arthur knew, of course. Arthur was
inclined to link your stammer directly to the circumstances of your conception,
and he said, Ernie, he said, why doesn't she do something? Ha? Why doesn't she
cure the poor lad's stutter? Arthur, I said, if you knew how much pain that
causes Ma, her own grandson …'

           
'Ger-grandson!' Angry tears joined the blood on Shaw's
cheeks. 'I used to stand outside wer-with the other ker-ker-kids der-daring
each other to look into the wer-windows. She'd cher-chase us all off.
Wer-wer-witch. Owd witch!'
           
She was frightened, Shaw.
Frightened for you. Scared that one day she might have to banish you as well because
of what might be in your blood. Didn't want you exposed to the shadow side.
That's why after your ... after Arthur died, she'd never come up to see your
mother, even when Liz became agoraphobic and wouldn't come down to the village.
She didn't want to go near
you
. She
didn't want you ever to know who you were or to become drawn to the shadow
side.'